See How They Run

by James Patterson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

His family has been murdered. His past lover is running for her life. And now, Dr. David Strauss must travel across Europe to track down the killers. Outside New York City, the palatial home of Dr. David Strauss's parents is attacked by gunmen during a glittering party. As he watches helplessly, his wife is murdered. In Los Angeles, Strauss's brother is killed during the Academy Award ceremonies. In Manhattan, his past sweetheart, Alix Rothchild, is running for her life. Dr. David Strauss is soon obsessed with finding the explosive secret behind the murders of his family members. His dangerous odyssey takes him across Europe, and finally to the Olympics, straight to one of the most shattering surprises in suspense fiction. Brilliant and chilling, See How They Run is another stunning story from the world's #1 writer.

Release date: May 1, 1997

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 336

Sample

CHAPTER 1

The King David Hotel, Jerusalem.

October, 1979.

Five months before the beginning.

A benevolent midafternoon sun spattered golden streaks over the historic domes and needle spires, up and down the gray-yellow stones of the ancient Holy pity walls. A bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon, a pot of English Breakfast tea, and a cold Maccabee beer were brought to the three old friends sitting on the pretty hotel terrace.

It is a fact recorded in several news correspondents’ notebooks—though not as yet in their newspapers—that a sacred and very secret Jewish brotherhood had existed in Western Europe, America, and Israel since the end of World War II. The group was composed of workingmen and women; of farmers, entertainers, taxi drivers; of wealthy doctors, solicitors, merchants, rabbis; of important government leaders and elite army officers.

No matter how these men and women earned their livings, however, the sworn purpose of the cabal thrust another task on them.

They were to remember the terrible Holocaust—every last abhorrent detail. They were to protect against another unholy conflagration with their lives if need be. They were to relentlessly hunt down those responsible for the first abomination against the Jewish people and against mankind.

Two of the three friends clustered together on the hotel terrace were the secret brotherhood’s original leaders—the third was a woman, a wealthy contributor from America.

Seated as they were in view of the gates of Old City, the three made a curious and memorable portrait—a noble picture worthy of exhibition in the Jewish Museum.

Benjamin Rabinowitz.

Michael Ben-Iban.

Elena Cohen Strauss.

A combined age of 226 years.

All survivors of the Nazi death camps thirty-five years before.

The previous evening, Elena Strauss and Ben-Iban had jetted to Jerusalem after receiving an urgent message from Rabinowitz:

THE TIME HAS COME TO REMEMBER OUR SACRED PLEDGE. … THE FOURTH REICH IS ABOUT TO RISE. IT IS TIME TO CONCLUDE THE DISCUSSION STAGE OF OUR PLAN TO ONCE AND FOREVER STOP THE ENEMY.

Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique—then a BBC news broadcast—served as civilized background for the several private conversations progressing in grunts and murmurs on the grandly elegant hotel terrace. The clean smell of almonds and oranges was everywhere in the air.

Out on the streets of Rehavia, Arab cabdrivers could be heard mischievously blaring their Mercedes taxi horns. Out there, too, Hasidim tourists trudged along in their broad hats and stiff beards, pointing at Moses Mantefiore’s windmill, acting as if the Ba’al Shem Tov himself were standing at every cross street.

In the beginning of their meeting, the three old friends merely chatted.

The most casual talk possible under the circumstances.

They sipped their drinks, and they offered opinions on a recent Black September bombing of a children’s school bus in Bayit Vegan. They spoke of a best-selling book from England, which had documented that the PLO was receiving huge sums of money from neo-Nazis living in southern France. They gave Freudian interpretations of Teddy Kollek’s grand reconstruction dreams for Jerusalem.

Eighty-two-year-old Elena Strauss managed to smile a few times.

Especially when they shared an old story—that was the best.

But when they finally began to talk about the most sinister topic, when the loathsome Reich was brought up, the wizened old woman’s hands knotted into tight fists. She could barely breathe. A single word, a single idea, was pounding on her brain.

Danger.

“No matter what good we are able to accomplish, the Nazis get wealthier and more powerful,” Benjamin Rabinowitz began. “In South America. In West Germany and Austria. Even in Chicago and New York. In the south of France …”

“They are indeed ready again, Elena,” Michael Ben-Iban elaborated. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Their wealth at this time is astounding.

“The opulent estates you know about, and the gold and diamond reserves. What you don’t know about are the legitimate businesses. All over the world. The so-called multinational companies run with the Reich’s, money. Automobile companies. Oil companies. Communications conglomerates. Like nothing we’ve seen before!”

Benjamin Rabinowitz now began to elaborately review his plan. His proposal to silence the Reich once and for all time. The financing of which was the chief reason for the important Jerusalem meeting.

When Rabinowitz finished, tears were pooling in the soft brown eyes of Elena Strauss. The deadweight sadness and disappointment she was feeling right then were too much for her frail, weakened body. What Elena Strauss had to do next seemed an impossible task. What she had to do seemed like a betrayal.

The wealthy American woman stared across the table at hawklike Michael Ben-Iban, perhaps the bravest Nazi-hunter next to Simon Wiesenthal and Dr. Michael Ben-Zohar. She looked at shrewd, feisty Benjamin Rabinowitz. Such old, old friends, she thought. Such a wonderful; courageous alliance they’d shared … even more so because so very few people knew of their heroics.

Somehow, all three of them had survived the German death camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka.

They had all been members of She’erit Hapleetch, the “Surviving Remnant,” formed when no countries other than the Jewish community in Palestine had been willing to accept large groups of survivors from the death camps.

Instead of planning for the Jewish state, however, they had been among those who planned revenge and retribution. They had been among those who planned for the future defense of the Jewish people.

Together with forty-four other survivors, they had drawn up the radical brotherhood’s priority list for the first Nazihunting year of 1946. That first year they had patiently tracked down and killed SS Brigadier General Ernst Grawitz; SS Major Otto Steiner, supervisor of the Belsen gas chambers; SS Colonel Albert Hohlfelder, who had viciously sterilized thousands of Jewish children by mass X-ray exposure.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, they had diligently hunted dangerous members of Die Spinne and ODESSA.

They had relentlessly watched for the dreaded Nazi renaissance.

They had remembered the terrible Holocaust—every last abhorrent detail.

“Benjamin, I have listened carefully to your plan, your fears about a new Reich.” Elena was finally able to speak again. “I have lived and slept with your arguments, your dark conclusions. I have considered them as carefully as anything in my life … You say you need a great deal of money from me. Seven or eight hundred thousand dollars. I spoke at length with my oldest grandson before I came to Jerusalem. We talked about the Nazis, about the present condition of the Reich.”

“They have never been more dangerous than right now,” Benjamin Rabinowitz said.

Elena Strauss shook her head. “We think you’re terribly wrong,” she sighed. “But more important than that, the actions of our group have always been accomplished with great honor, with justice in all our minds. No matter how strong our enemies become, Benjamin, Michael, we must never go down to their Hun, barbarian level. This is the secret strength of the Jewish people, I believe. This is one reason we have survived. I don’t believe we should act against our enemies now. Not in this hateful manner.”

The thin voice of Rabinowitz suddenly rose above the clatter of the King David terrace. It was like the voice of a stern and knowing rabbi rebuking his shortsighted congregation.

“You’ve lived as a wealthy American for too long, Elena,” the old man railed. “You don’t understand the terrifying world we live in today. You couldn’t possibly, and still talk as you do. The Fourth Reich’s money is everywhere, Elena. The Nazi cancer is everywhere. In the Middle East. In America. In Germany, where the Spider’s cells are springing up everywhere. Where little blond-haired children are marching again.”

Elena Strauss reached into her purse.

“I have a small check. I want you to continue the search for Bormann, Mengele, Muller. You must! Please! As for the rest, I say no. My grandson wants to go to the other contributing families. To the American FBI. If necessary, we would break our vows to stop a dangerous confrontation at this time … You are taking away the last possibility of justice ever being accomplished for the six million! I will not allow this to happen! No! No!” The American woman’s face was drawn tight. Her eyes were filled with rage.

Neither Benjamin Rabinowitz nor Michael Ben-Iban could believe that Elena Strauss would even speak of breaking their blood oath. For a moment, they were numb. Benjamin Rabinowitz’s mouth was filled with bile. He thought he was going to be sick on the hotel terrace.

Elena Strauss was turning them down at the worst possible time.

The elderly woman suddenly stood up from their table. She was trembling, blinking her eyes very rapidly.

“I have been feeling bad this fall. Sick. Old—which I am. I should go back to my room now. This is a hard day for me, too.”

Mrs. Elena Strauss bent and gave each of the old men a quick hug. They each hugged her back. The sadness was overwhelming in its intensity. Thirty-five years … now, threats! The breaking of oaths! There were tears in all of their eyes as they embraced. It was like the hollow, numb, empty feeling that comes on first hearing of a friend’s death.

“Benjamin … Michael … shalom.”

“She is a very, very old woman. A good woman,” Michael Ben-Iban whispered, after Elena had disappeared back into the hotel “Perhaps in a little time she’ll come to understand … Benjamin? Are you all right, Benjamin?”

Benjamin Rabinowitz folded his thin arms and moaned softly.

“There is no time not to understand. If only I had made her see the terrible danger we know is there, Michael. The fault is mine. Oh, Moshe, no one but Jews will protect other Jews from our enemies. You know that.”

Michael Ben-Iban nodded sadly. He knew. He knew it all too well.

Ben-Iban also knew that the enemy was truly capable of anything now. Even a second Holocaust. Even a terrible bombing right there in Israel. For the first time in thirty-five years, Ben-Iban thought, the Jewish nation could be without an adequate defense. A defense manned by Jews who understood the grave, ever-present danger.

As the two ancient survivors finished their drinks that sad afternoon, the Arab Imam was still wailing, still praying from his distant minaret.

The priest’s prayer was that God would come and give him back his golden city.

His prayer was that God would come down and kill all the Jews.

One hundred seventy-four days later, it suddenly began to happen.

On four continents across the civilized world.

A heart-sinking plot that would be called Dachau Zwei.

Dachau Two.

CHAPTER 1

Scarsdale, New York.

April 24, 1980.

One day before the beginning.

Along the dark, gray country roads there were Tudor and Norman mansions with eight-foot-high hedges and pollarded trees. There was a striking chimney-red tennis court with high white referee chairs—where a rich adulteress named Norma Lynch had been shot to death in 1943.

There were rigidly rectangular cream and lime-green tile swimming pools and trendy bumper stickers: Honk if you believe in tennis; and Post roads, James Fenimore Cooper streets, Leatherstocking lanes. …

These things, in fact, were the rule of thumbing one’s nose in that part of Westchester County where Dr. David Strauss and Alix Rothman had grown up.

Where the American part of the story has its beginnings.

Where the nightmares begin.

The April day that made the village infamous had a scratchy, nervous quality about it.

It left an uncomfortable feeling in Vulkan’s mouth, like sweater fuzzballs under his tongue.

Coughing into a crisp white handkerchief, Vulkan watched the others fan away from the wonderfully kept children’s playground.

The Hausfrau (Housewife), a pretty, petite woman—also a fearsome, dedicated warrior—walked away alongside a picturesque fieldstone wall and weeping willow trees on Horse Guard Lane.

The Soldat (Soldier) was forcing his great hulking body into a sleek MG Stag parked on Upper North Avenue.

The Waffen-Fachmann (Weapons Expert) sat at a bus stop, a paperback, The Boat, pressed up to his face. He had on a beige raincoat, snap-brim hat, Weejuns … very American looking.

The beadlelike Ingenieur (Engineer) had simply vanished—poof—blended into the residential backdrop like yet another Country Squire station wagon.

Last, the Führer was marching off to a chauffeured limousine, which was relatively inconspicuous on the money-lined streets.

The idea of their taking on World War II code names, meeting on this small-town American street in 1980, was preposterous and dangerous, Vulkan was thinking.

Still, the final meeting had to be someplace, didn’t it?

The final decisions had to be made before the Final Solution could begin.

Vulkan took out a beautiful pocket watch, cradling it in the Palm of his hand. The man’s face was dimly reflected in the silver lid of the watch. His felt hat, tipped at a raffish angle, was reflected as well.

It was all neatly superimposed over a grand, elegant inscription: Dachau Konzentrationslager. Sturmbannführer Mann. 1932—

Agile, piano-player fingers now pried open the watch cover.

Inside was a delicately balanced, silver and ruby-red swastika.

The four crooked arms were pointed and feathered like an Eagle trout-fishing hook.

Over the swastika itself, tiny black hands were ticking off the seconds, days, years.

It was now time to begin.

Again.

The people who live in Scarsdale, especially the buck skinned, shaggy-haired boys and girls who attend the ivy-covered high school, often complain that nothing meaningful or exciting ever happens in the quiet, wealthy suburban town.

The following night something terrible happened.

Murder was committed in Scarsdale,

The Nazis came to America.

CHAPTER 2

Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, April 25.

The teenager lying center stage, Trendelenburg position on the hospital delivery table, was Katherine Hope O’Neill. Katherine was an anachronistic Irish-Catholic girl from the Yorkville section of Manhattan. She had a Kelly-green bow in her shiny black hair to prove it.

The underwhelming color in the Mount Sinai Hospital delivery room was green also. A slightly turquoise, sloshy, seasick green.

The hospital setup table was covered with sterile green gowns, green drapes, furzy green sponges. A wrinkled sheet was laid underneath the delivery table like a big green mistake. “The evaporating, dying Cookie Monster,” Dr. David Strauss had called it:

At 2:45 A.M., with a cup of lukewarm New York regular and a stale Danish sloughing back and forth in his stomach, all that thirty-seven-year-old Dr. David Strauss could manage for the teenager was, “Well, Kath, I guess in about a week or so you’re going to have a baby.”

“Booo.” The head nurse, Mary Cannel, managed a half smile.

“Hey, what do you guys expect at quarter to three in the morning? Robert Klein? Steve Martin, maybe?”

Katherine O’Neill’s cervix was fully dilated now and she was pushing hard to expel her baby.

“Push! Push! Push!” one of the nurses was chanting like a medieval midwife.

Just a little girl, David Strauss was thinking as he stood over the delivery-room scrub basin. Little teen-angel. Soft white Madonna’s face framed in lovely rings of black hair. Knocked up on the swinging East Side. Shit. What a waste.

According to her chart, Katherine O’Neill was seventeen. Unmarried. Uninsured. And much too young to have babies, David Strauss would have added. Too tiny and narrow at the hips.

Which was probably why the fetal monitor read 101—about nineteen counts slower than it should have been.

David Strauss hurried into a loose-fitting scrub suit. He tugged his sewing-thimble cap over his thick black curls. Tied on the mask. Booties. And as he always did right about then, David Strauss suddenly felt a great wave of very adult responsibleness. For the next fifteen minutes or so, he was a doctor. He was an adult.

One of the nurses, who was busy listening to the O’Neill baby with a fetuscope, suddenly called out across the room.

“The heartbeat has stopped, David!”

David Strauss, the anesthetist, and the attending resident ran to the delivery table.

Katherine O’Neill was undergoing the most severe contractions.

The girl was sobbing, calling out a boy’s name. The small breasts under her hospital tunic were hard fists with sharp tiny points.

A pair of forceps appeared in Dr. David Strauss’s hand.

Glinting in the overhead kettledrum lights, the forceps descended between Katherine O’Neill’s trembling legs.

Then David was hoisting a baby girl up into the lime-light, letting its blood rush back for nourishment.

The umbilical cord was carefully snipped. David whacked the baby’s bottom extra hard.

“Prolapsed cord.” The young doctor tried to sound calm and usual. A “prolapsed cord” meant that the umbilical cord had been compressed between the baby’s head and the mother’s pelvic bone. Oxygen had totally been cut off.

The baby girl still wasn’t breathing.

Strauss’s six-foot one-inch frame was bent in half over the blue, suffering infant. He gently blew into a tracheal catheter, trying to force oxygen into the baby’s lungs.

“More heat!” He wanted the Infant Table Warmer.

“Adrenalin,” the resident tersely instructed at Strauss’s side.

In the terr. . .